No drugs. No drinking. No lesbians. For more than 25 years, Penn State University women’s basketball coach Rene Portland made her training rules eminently clear. While the school administration turned a blind eye to Portland’s homophobic coaching philosophy, talented young players were harassed, threatened and even thrown off the team and stripped of their college scholarships. The women on Portland’s squads were forbidden from associating with any classmate suspected of being a lesbian and forced to either hide their true identities or give up their dreams of competing in the sport on which many had banked their futures.

But in 2006, sophomore Jennifer Harris took on the Penn State machine and its iconic coach, and, with the assistance of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, sued for discrimination. Award-winning Bay Area filmmakers Dee Mosbacher and Fawn Yacker have woven a powerful web of evidence, interviews and the emotional and heartbreaking stories of players who have suffered under Portland’s long, intolerant tenure. — JOANNE PARSONT